Reparations: A Memorandum
by Terry Smith The early definition of “reparations” was simply “war debts.” It consisted of war losers paying the cost of waging war to war winners. As they say, “To the victor go the spoils.” Citizens in their individual capacity did not participate in the flow of reparations. The transfer of wealth was from one Read the full article…
Morris: An IU Mascot
by Leo Morris There is distressing news from Indiana University. In the Daily Student newspaper, the headline tells the sad story: “Forty years have passed since IU sported a mascot.” The university is one of only three of the 14 schools in the Big Ten conference, along with Michigan and Illinois, to have no mascot. Read the full article…
The Lost Magic of Property
“If we’re going to turn our local governments into investment banks, we’ll need to find smarter people to run them.” — a Fort Wayne manufacturer IT IS WHAT you hear most, and should trouble you the most: “I don’t know about the financing but I love what’s going on downtown.” In Indiana, that might be Read the full article…
Morris: Municipal Voting
by Leo Morris Municipal elections are coming up in Indiana, and it’s hard not to be cynical about them. In my city of Fort Wayne, participation in odd-year balloting has been plummeting. In 2003, just above 30 percent of eligible voters went to the polls. In 2011, it was only 26.21 percent, and in 2015 Read the full article…
Morris: Elementary Love
Love Denied, Schooling Begins For immediate release (click on mug shot for high-resolution copy). by Leo Morris The story seemed to pop up then fade in less than a day, which was warp speed even in today’s social-media-driven news cycles. And it was pretty tame stuff, considering how normality is sliding into the abyss from Read the full article…
Backgrounder: ‘News’ by Algorithm
AN EDITOR FRIEND, forced to watch close-up the death throes of our hometown newspaper, offered a fresh perspective on the threadbare issue of journalism’s demise. She thinks it has to do with confusing compliments with subscriptions. We ran out of publishers able to provide an adult presence, she might say. That’s when yuppie editors began flooding Read the full article…
